Week 19 & 20 - 100in1001

For all of my loyal readers, I'm sorry there was no update last week. To be honest, TIP has kept me rather busy since the start because of all the lesson planning I've been doing. That is really no excuse but that's all I got.

It's been a good couple of weeks though. I have met a lot of great people on staff and have been going out and having a fun time with them. The students show moments of brilliance right alongside displays of lack of wisdom and/or maturity. I definitely have a fun time teaching my class though and this term is no exception. One great moment is the students walked into class one morning and several were debating whether going into the past and killing your past self is suicide or homicide. This gave me a good laugh, but it got better when the "winner" emerged as homicide citing Dragonball Z's interpretation of time where each decision creates parallel universes as the evidence.

Using Python and PyGame have turned out well, though PyGame has presented some stumbling blocks. The worst thing I've come across so far is rotation is not handled well and the finicky screen setup and drawing that often leaves a blank screen reminds me a lot of my frustrations with OpenGL. Oh, and no built-in sprite animation, not even animated gifs, is a terrible oversight. Both the class and I have gotten a better grasp on it though so next semester should be much smoother. I've been developing a Sprite OO based API into PyGame that I'll probably post on my regular site's code section once it gets a bit more mature. Why am I doing this? Quite simply I think PyGame is a bit too functional for new programmers. sprite.rotate( 45 ) makes more sense than sprite = pygame.transform.rotate( 45 ).

Outside of teaching, I've played a lot of tennis and basketball. It's been great to get back into physically intensive sports after really only playing disc golf for quite some time. Tennis game is getting back in shape, all those rounds of racquetball with Jon screwed up my tennis stroke. Basketball has been similarly fun and my shot has definitely only starting to dust off, but I think I'm going to stop playing. I turned my right ankle a bit when someone (a much larger someone) bumped into me and it's obvious it hasn't fully recovered from the sprain this past spring. Unfortunately all the teaching and tennis have put my disc golf game behind a bit, only been getting out once or twice a week and my throw rebuild is kind of stagnating without the consistent practice.

Finally, I watched Casablanca so that was the beginning of the AFI 100 list. What can I really say about this movie? It's fantastic: great cinematography, lighting, mood, and dialog. I haven't been disappointed with a Bogart movie yet. While I can relate to the story, I feel that I'm a bit too far removed from the time period to fully feel the impact of the story. It is still a timeless story I would say, but it probably does lose just a little to a younger viewer.